Steve Buttry, Dearly Departed Husband, Father and Grandfather. Former Director of Student Media, LSU's Manship School of Mass Communication

News organizations need mobile-first strategy

To read all three of my “mobile-first strategy” posts as a pdf with a table of contents, scroll to the end of this post.

News organizations are belatedly, reluctantly and often awkwardly pursuing “web-first” strategies. As we fight these web battles, I am increasingly coming to believe that “web first” is what the military would call fighting the last war. News organizations need a mobile-first strategy.

“Web first” was a tremendously difficult concept for journalists and newspaper companies.

We wasted energy and time fretting over whether and how to move online and then went about it wrong, as the world moved ever swifter to the web and got more things right than we did and learned more lessons than we did from mistakes.

Newspaper companies are so thoroughly rooted in print and so devoted to ink and paper that we missed opportunities and held back as digital technology revolutionized communication, leaving us behind.

We can’t waste that much time in mastering the mobile market. We need to start thinking mobile first. Now. The world is moving swiftly to smart phones and we can’t afford to be as far behind this time (in truth, it’s too late to be ahead, but not too late to pursue opportunities that can lead us to a prosperous future). We need to make mobile innovation the top priority and the first thing we think of when we plan change in our organizations.

(I should note that web-first meant content would be published online before in the print edition, and that the organization should start thinking first about the web, though most didn’t, regardless of what they were saying. When I say we must shift to a mobile-first strategy, I’m not talking about where content appears when, but about the priorities of the organization: what you place first in your thinking and acting.)

I heard someone recently cite figures on the low (in his view) percentage of people who actually own iPhones (I won’t cite the figure he gave because it’s out of date and the relevant numbers are those about growth of iPhone sales and apps). Actually, the penetration percentage is a great reason to get moving swiftly into iPhone opportunities. If we wait until nearly everyone has some sort of smart phone, someone else will be filling the roles that we can and should fill.

“Mobile first” needs to change how we think and act throughout our organizations. Reporters, editors and visual journalists need to think first about how to package and deliver news for mobile devices. Information technology staffs need to work first on development of mobile applications for popular devices. Sales staffs need to make it a top priority to guide business customers in using our mobile apps and platforms to reach customers with advertising and direct-sales opportunities. Designers need to present content that is clear and easy to read on the small screen (even if this means spending less staff resources on design of print or web products). Executives need to redirect resources and set priorities so that we pursue mobile opportunities as aggressively as we pursue the most important news stories in our communities.

We try to make one size fit all in many aspects of our business, but that will not work in a mobile-first world. We need to become the mobile news, information and commerce connection for people with the latest iPhone, BlackBerry or Droid (and whatever comes next), but also for people with simpler phones that handle only phone calls and text messages and for non-phone devices such as iPods.

Whatever your role in your media organization, consider how you would change your work, your priorities and your thinking to support a mobile-first strategy. This will either be our future or our next squandered opportunity.

Read all three of my “mobile-first strategy” posts together, with their comments, and a table of contents:

104 Responses

A caveat: People have a different relationship with a “phone” than they do a computer, and if what you’re pushing toward them is something they really don’t want, they’re going to be aggressive in the way they turn you off — for good.

So while we’ve always looked at news as something we pushed out to people, when it comes to mobile, it needs to be more of a pull… or at least some kind of app that learns from the individual user’s stated preferences and actual actions.

I agree with Media Guy and Dan. The secret to commercial success in a mobile-first company is not bombarding people with unwelcome ads, but helping them by providing easy access to the commercial information they need and helping them do business with a few taps of the thumb.

Honestly, I don’t even mind ads. Truth be told, I kind of ignore them and barely notice them anyway. What drives me nuts is mobile sites that are broken, and stories on mobile sites that are exactly the same as the one on the website. If the story is good and I’m interested in the topic I don’t mind paging through a 3 page story on a website. That same 3-webpage story on my Blackberry however is quite painful.

Dan makes a good point. The relationship with the phone is different. That said, I read more on my iPhone than I ever thought I would and I’m not so sure that pull is more important than push. You what would be cool? If you could bookmark something you’re reading in a news app, ie, NYT, and next time you pulled that site up on a computer and were logged in it would push a reminder to you on the home page that you’ve bookmarked some content to read. Then you could read it on your larger monitor later. Many times I run across things I want to read but I don’t want to read it on the tiny phone window or I don’t have time but don’t want to forget about it either. This happens frequently in Twitter and luckily I can “favorite” these items or email them to myself.

In any case, I’m rambling but my point is that I think Steve is right that any media org that isn’t paying attention to its mobile strategy is doing so at its own risk. The way we find and digest information is changing rapidly and radically, like it or not, and “protecting print” (God, how tiresome that’s growing) is not an effective long-term view if you want to extend the brand and capture or even keep your market share. Print is just one golden egg, the goose is that all-important audience.

Absolutely correct. Mobile is where the growing market is, I believe. Formatting the content and providing useful aps is key to successful use of the smart phones. For busy people it’s going to be short sound-bites (headlines re: Twitter etc.) for news and the use of aps that make life easier (connecting users to whatever information they’re searching for).

I think you’re right. Also, though, we need significant new thought about HOW to do mobile right. It would be a mistake to treat mobile just like the desktop web, same as it was a mistake to treat the web like print when it arrived.

And see the whole picture as a company. Newsroom folks will think about mobile news, but the company has to also go after the commercial side with sponsorships and location-aware ads or coupons.

I agree in principle, but isn’t it really about just publishing as much as we have as often as we have it. I understand that sounds simple and obvious…but why must we say to “mobile” or to “web” or to a “carrot”.

It just seems blatantly obvious to me that when ever we are, where ever we are – publish the information we have to any medium we have access to.

If we are at the print deadline – publish what we have. If we have a new story about the re-opening of a flood ravaged business, push it out to the website. If we receive a scanner call about a fire and 5th and Main and we have a person tracking that story – publish it to twitter and maybe a “mini-blog” section of the website.

Who cares what, where or when – just push out the content. The consumer should know what we know, very shortly after we know it, in the medium they choose to receive it in.

Use: Many reporters and editors became comfortable with the idea of a web-first approach once they started to really understand and use the web on a daily basis. That might be the first step to a mobile success. Staff must start using their phones for more than phone calls and an occasional text message.

Report: Aside from publishing to mobile, journalists need to start using their phones to report. “Citizen journalists” have been doing it for quite some time. Instead of filing a picture from the field and waiting for it to be included in a blog post or article, they have been tweeted pictures, sans-article. Journalists can and should follow that example.

Champion: One of the biggest motivators that I’ve seen is success. If people witness a colleague succeed with mobile (of course, we’ll need to define success), they will be more likely to climb aboard the mobile train. This is what I’ve seen with blogging journalists.

Security: Many people in news organizations are just plain scared that they might lose their jobs. They’ve seen friends go “web first” and still lose their jobs. Other colleagues thought blogging would save them, but they were let go too. If journalists fully embrace mobile now, will they have a better chance at surviving the next round of downsizing?

Kevin, I completely agree on use, report and champion, and appreciate those insights. On security, I wouldn’t pretend that I can predict how corporate executives will decide to make the next round of downsizing. We’ve seen lots of irrational moves to protect the print product, and those people will throw the wrong people overboard. But they will keep cutting because that strategy won’t work. So my answer is that mobile-first is scary, but not as scary as not trying it and not getting as deeply involved as possible in it.

There are some similarities: Jumping from well-established print to the lower-revenue web, jumping from a well-established web site to the much lower usage (for now) of mobile. The challenge will be familiar: How does a well-established news company switch to a low-revenue but disruptive technology? Does it start a separate operation or try to leverage its brand? Can it be the “two guys in a dorm room” with the people and organization it has? Will it wait and buy the two guys when they’ve got a hit on their hands? Can a local newspaper spend its shrinking money on app developers? Does the local newspaper understand the different consumer cultures of print, web and mobile? Does the advertising staff? If you were mobile-only, how much money would you make? Would it support nothing more than spending money for two app developers in college? And how much mobile reporting will it take to support mobile news?

I can kind of understand why someone might say, “Here we go again. All I want is a revenue-first strategy.” Well-established companies are not good at moving to disruptive technologies. They tend to wait until a development is “big enough to be interesting” and by then, someone else owns it. The best companies in their fields often have the hardest time.

It sounds depressing. There are excellent mobile news apps, like NPR’s. Can a local newspaper do as much?

I agree it needs to be done, and it could be an exciting challenge. Sadly, too many newsrooms are worn out and managing the decline. Others might be ready to, but must defer to the headquarters of the chain, where the developers are. Others rely on buying from a vendor. Still, there’s no substitute for an energized newsroom that knows the community, and vice versa.

Thanks to Jay Rosen for noting on Twitter that this is just a start to discussion of a mobile-first strategy. “We need you to go beyond the hortatory,” Jay told me on Twitter. “Describe what a ‘mobile first’ newsroom would do differently.” I actually was a couple paragraphs into such a description when I decided that this post was already long enough and that I wanted to publish this now, rather than waiting until I fleshed out details.

Jay’s call is only part of the challenge, though. We need to discuss what a newsroom would do differently, but also what an advertising staff would do differently (including thinking beyond advertising), what an IT staff would do differently and what company executives would do differently.

I will provide my answers in all those areas in the coming weeks (I have an international trip coming up and am not sure how quickly I will be able to address these questions. However, I posted this now to stimulate discussion (and am pleased with the discussion both in comments here and on Twitter) of these very questions. What do you think we should be doing to carry out a mobile-first strategy?

Great stuff. Cubbison’s questions get to the heart of the problem for most existing newsrooms.

People have relationships with their phones. Thinking mobile first means going beyond pushing information to those phones and responding to a tweet if you’re not busy. Phone software like Foursquare enables people to gather and share information, and rewards them emotionally for doing so. Current newsroom culture plus community skepticism make it hard for legacy news organizations to embrace that change.

Some news organizations might be in a position to get IT people to build mobile apps, but those are few: NYT, and then who else?

So what to do: Think about what newsrooms produce that could be valuable to those two guys (or gals) in a dorm room working on augmented reality or games like Foursquare. What archives, lists, maps, photos, stories or ads could be traded for tech development, links or ad positions? What historic photos can be tagged and traded with the makers of augmented reality apps., so a person can stand on a corner and use their phone to see how the corner looked 50 years ago?

How do you strike a deal right now?

To those still in newsrooms or out selling ads: Embrace clear tagging of everything: bylines, datelines, maps, photos, lists and ads, with the understanding that the content can be sold or traded to other companies.

Steve Buttry’s absolutely right about fighting the last war. Maybe newsrooms could make allies of those tech folks in a dorm room instead of fighting another one.

Every newspaper should immediately secure at least one branded shortcode (e.g., “CRGAZ” for Cedar Rapids Gazette). These will become a critical point of interaction for both news and commercial purposes.

I agree that shortcodes are still relevant right now. However, vanity shortcodes are expensive (a steep monthly fee plus paying per message sent out adds up) and limited (ever try replying to a tweet via mobile? You have to manually type the “@someone” for it to know it’s a reply. Ditto for news signups – make one typo and the message bounces). The character limit is restrictive also.

I can’t say for sure what might replace shortcodes, but I can’t imagine a technology with so many limitations dominating the market long-term.

A live EveryBlock is something to shoot for if you have the tech chops.

Designers should understand that mobile includes many platforms: Twitter-like services, standard web pages that are reachable by smartphone browsers, web pages that are optimized for the iPhone and others, apps that are really optimized for a certain phone, plus formatting for e-readers.

Reporters and editors should understand that just as a web site is not necessarily the best way to read a 12-part series, a smartphone is not the best way to read a 20-inch story. A different kind of news — location-based updates — thrives on mobile.

Advertising staff should see advertising as “news for customers.”

Especially, mobile is a chance to facilitate intent. Most advertising interrupts us while we’re trying to do something else. Google’s genius, even if they didn’t realize it at the time, is in serving ads that facilitate your intent. Search for snowblowers, and Google serves ads that facilitate your intent to buy one. Mobile ads can facilitate your intent to go out to eat, among many other things.

Context is a another huge ingredient in mobile.
Mobile is different from the web in part because it’s always with us. While context could play a role in web experience via IP address, it tends to be less significant since we usually use different machines at home and at work.

We all have different informational needs depending on where we are at the moment. A restaurant coupon might be handy around lunchtime near the office but irrelevant near a school in the afternoon. We can already customize our notification settings for different contexts (vibrate in pocket, silent during a meeting, different ringtones for friends versus clients). Mobile apps should be equally sensitive to context and deliver info, coupons, news, etc. that takes time and place into account.

The trick is finding a way to let it learn from your habits so it gets better at anticipating and fulfilling needs you didn’t know you had. Contextual mobile alerts would recognize that you stopped by a grocery store to pick up zucchini but alert you that swinging by the greeting cards aisle might be a good idea since your aunt’s birthday is coming up soon.

The right mobile program makes a newspaper money. This technology allows newspapers to utilize their existing sales team, advertising expertise and operational resources to generate new revenue stream. All the pieces are there today to do this. Furthermore, link the right mobile location-base service with a newspaper’s sales and marketing resources and the company can lock up their local mobile ad market. Add into this mix an integrated digital media advertising and delivery service and you have the makings of a really powerful, money generating digital ad service that delivers across many digital platforms. But the window is closing fast on this opportunity.

A Facebook friend asked about this post: “Has there been much research on how iPhones are used for news? Do people use them as a daily source of news? Do they just read whatever links people send to them? Or do they just kinda scan CNN or favorite news sites once in a while when they have downtime? I’d be an interesting challenge to package a classic five-part investigative news series for a mobile platform.”

I replied: “I don’t know all the research that might have been done. But I know when I sit around an airport lounge, I see lots more people looking into phones than looking into laptops or newspapers (or talking on phones). I don’t know that the classic five-part investigative news series would get the same readership on a mobile platform, but it’s not getting the same readership in print either. On the other hand, Amazon has a Kindle app that people are using to read books. I would like to see someone try (please point me in the direction, if they have) that series as an iPhone app: interactive graphics, video, maps and audio. Yeah, some text that’s formatted for the small screen.”

[…] at stake? I agree with Steve Buttry when he says that the ‘web-first’ wars are in many ways fighting the last w…. I thought we had put this web war behind us in journalism but if we continue to fight it, we will […]

Great post, Steve. I’m a 30-year newspaper veteran who left newspapers last year to help develop a mobile news company. I’ve been talking with newspaper editors about our mobile web app, which will be able to stream news, public records, social media and ads to smartphones. Users can then filter the real-time stream according to keywords and location.

What’s fascinating is that when I talk about the app with editors, one of the first questions I get is: “Can you put that on our web site?” Since it’s a mobile web app rather than a native smartphone app, the answer is, in so many words: “Sure, if you want to embed our mobile phone on your web site, we can do it.”

The result: I now have a real-time web widget to sell along with our mobile app.

The apparent lesson: If your customers are always fighting the last war, don’t try to sell them supplies for the next war.

He praises this post, which I appreciate, but that’s not why I call it to your attention. As usual, Mark adds considerable insight to the discussion: “Building great mobile products is no more about pasting the Web on a cellphone screen than building great Web products is about pasting the newspaper on a computer screen. They’re almost entirely different media, and they require very different sensibilities and thinking—which seem generally lacking in most old-line news organizations that are still grappling with the Web.”

Mark also provide a detailed, and scathing, review of the Washington Post’s mobile service.

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Whoa, this is a new concept I have never heard before. I agree about going mobile. I personally have a blackberry and would probably prefer getting my news from my phone because it is more portable than the screen of a lap top or computer.

It will be a challenge, but the web was and STILL IS a challenge for many companies. Why not try a new direction? And partnering with a company such as Apple would be great.

Just starting to dig into your site after guest-lecturing at an undergrad journalism class where I surveyed 25 students: 2 read physical papers (though 3 others pointed out that the NYT is free in the student center, they don’t often read it). Two watched news. No one — nada — read blogs. The five who said they do seek out news all did it on their mobiles.

And it goes without saying (now that Pew has studied it) that no one younger than me tweets.

Glad to find your site, and to see all the creative thinking you’re engaged in. I remember you from the Nieman Narrative seminar, where you put this insight and creativity to good use. Excited to see what happens next on your blog and at your new job.

Actually, I connect with lots of young people who tweet. Don’t know when Pew studied, but I’m sure Twitter use by younger adults is growing. Nathan Wright says it’s the first social tool to “age in reverse.” What I know is that lots of young people (not all journalists) engage with me on Twitter.

How young is “young”? The median age of Twitter users is 31, gone up apparently. Even MySpace seems “old” (median = 26) compared to how I’ve always thought of it.

In my anecdotal experience, the 15-24 set text. Also in my anecdotal experience, there’s not a lot of information coming in from the outside; they engage through media with people and things they know. But I’m not even a teacher so my sample size is super small.

Thanks, Jina. Yes, I think Twitter users trend older than Facebook and MySpace. But my experience with the 15-24 set is that they use lots of media, but yes, text is huge. And Twitter works fine with text (I text my tweets occasionally). Also, August/September, the time frame for the Pew study is six months ago, which is a long time in the life of Twitter. And, as you may know, I have documented serious problems with another Pew study (https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/pew-doesnt-understand-news-ecosystem-well-enough-to-study-it/).

This is very true, out of the wide range of reasons you have put forward. I can’t help thinking, why is it so hard to look at what works for other businesses? Mobile first isn’t a new invention. It’s in fact a well known strategy, by now. eCommerce businesses have done this for years already, under the label of Multichannel strategy. Damn it, the public service sector have established “self services” online – and also in combination with traditional mail (“snail mail and e mail) and cell phones and replys / recites using SMS services. My point is that the concepts aren’t new, and it’s hard to understand a line of businesses being so stubborn that they collectively seem to refuse to look up from their papers.

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My newspaper for some time has had a mobile version of its Web site, and at my urging they adopted mobile coupons, which has produced good results so far. We’re fortunate that one of our sister divisions in the chain specializes in mobile media. I see mobile coupons as being a great new revenue source for newspapers. We protected our ground from an outside text message provider that had signed up one of our print ad clients and possibly would have started taking more business from us.

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